Open Shutters
September 11, 2022 11:32 AM Subscribe
Recent short-form non-fiction films from FIELD_OF_VISION:
They Won’t Call It Murder (2022, 20 min) For over 20 years, no police were charged with murder for killing residents in Columbus, Ohio. Five women challenge the city's lack of answers and accountability.
We Were There to Be There (2021, 27 min): In 1978, punk bands The Cramps and The Mutants performed a show for patients and staff at the psychiatric facility Napa State Hospital.
The Facility (2021, 26 min): A group of immigrants at an American detention center organize to demand protection from covid-19.
More (and less) recently:
Open Shutters (2022, 35 min): While reporting on the rise of spy cam porn in South Korea, a journalist discovers that she too is being watched in her own home.
Do Not Split (2021, 35 min): Told from within the heart of the Hong Kong protests, “Do Not Split” begins in 2019 as a proposed bill allowing the Chinese government to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China escalated protests throughout Hong Kong
This is an Address (2020, 18 min)In a meditation on community, gentrification, and erasure, Stonewall veteran and trans activist Sylvia Rivera takes up residency on the Hudson River piers with a group of HIV-positive New Yorkers, as cranes raze vacant buildings for a new skyline.
Homeland Is Not A Series (2015, 7 min): In what has become known as “The Homeland Incident,” The Arabian Street Artists engineered a graffiti hack on the show Homeland by placing subversive messages written in Arabic on set. Homeland is not a Series is a message from the artists themselves.
From the interview with filmmakers (Graffiti prank previously on MeFi).
They Won’t Call It Murder (2022, 20 min) For over 20 years, no police were charged with murder for killing residents in Columbus, Ohio. Five women challenge the city's lack of answers and accountability.
We Were There to Be There (2021, 27 min): In 1978, punk bands The Cramps and The Mutants performed a show for patients and staff at the psychiatric facility Napa State Hospital.
The Facility (2021, 26 min): A group of immigrants at an American detention center organize to demand protection from covid-19.
More (and less) recently:
Open Shutters (2022, 35 min): While reporting on the rise of spy cam porn in South Korea, a journalist discovers that she too is being watched in her own home.
Do Not Split (2021, 35 min): Told from within the heart of the Hong Kong protests, “Do Not Split” begins in 2019 as a proposed bill allowing the Chinese government to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China escalated protests throughout Hong Kong
This is an Address (2020, 18 min)In a meditation on community, gentrification, and erasure, Stonewall veteran and trans activist Sylvia Rivera takes up residency on the Hudson River piers with a group of HIV-positive New Yorkers, as cranes raze vacant buildings for a new skyline.
Homeland Is Not A Series (2015, 7 min): In what has become known as “The Homeland Incident,” The Arabian Street Artists engineered a graffiti hack on the show Homeland by placing subversive messages written in Arabic on set. Homeland is not a Series is a message from the artists themselves.
From the interview with filmmakers (Graffiti prank previously on MeFi).
Amin: That was the biggest, most popular graffiti, the one the media most often talked about — “Homeland is a Watermelon.” [The word watermelon can be used to indicate that something is a sham or a joke.] So we’re claiming that. We’re claiming the watermelon. The revolution is on.Field of Vision previously and previouslier.
Just watched Open Shutters, being a topic I had heard of before but wanted to know more about. It's very well-made.
What bothers me a lot is that the 'beats' of the stories are so depressingly familiar, which I suppose make sense because it's part of the same patriarchal edifice. How the burden of proof is on the victims, illustrated by the victim who herself had to review the footage for genitalia or breasts for the case to even be considered a sex crime. The himpathy for the perpetrator even from the criminal legal system, from the police who don't try very hard to catch anybody unless it's a male victim to a court where 8 out of 10 cases that are convicted (already a small number past the filters of being discovered, being arrested, being charged, being tried, and probably others) the sentence is suspended. The repeat offender nature of the perpetrators, like the one who filmed the journalist having done it to 34 other women. And not least the overwhelming majority of cases being men predating on women. Obviously societies in different countries are different and it seems like it's treated even more leniently over there compared to the US, but the broad strokes are there.
It reminds me of the #MeToo movement which was a truly global phenomenon. We have a long way to go to fulfill our ideals of universal human rights.
posted by coolname at 7:43 PM on September 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
What bothers me a lot is that the 'beats' of the stories are so depressingly familiar, which I suppose make sense because it's part of the same patriarchal edifice. How the burden of proof is on the victims, illustrated by the victim who herself had to review the footage for genitalia or breasts for the case to even be considered a sex crime. The himpathy for the perpetrator even from the criminal legal system, from the police who don't try very hard to catch anybody unless it's a male victim to a court where 8 out of 10 cases that are convicted (already a small number past the filters of being discovered, being arrested, being charged, being tried, and probably others) the sentence is suspended. The repeat offender nature of the perpetrators, like the one who filmed the journalist having done it to 34 other women. And not least the overwhelming majority of cases being men predating on women. Obviously societies in different countries are different and it seems like it's treated even more leniently over there compared to the US, but the broad strokes are there.
It reminds me of the #MeToo movement which was a truly global phenomenon. We have a long way to go to fulfill our ideals of universal human rights.
posted by coolname at 7:43 PM on September 12, 2022 [2 favorites]
« Older Formation Dancing | "We overcome. We own the finish line.” —VP Joe... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by rpfields at 2:35 PM on September 11, 2022